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Illegal War Is Becoming The New Norm

The killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by a US-Israeli strike is a targeted assassination of a head of state. It also marks a grave escalation in a region already burdened with smouldering wars and fragile states. The consequences of the deliberate strike will reverberate across a Middle East marked by the aftershocks of foreign intervention. Revulsion against the hardline regime in Tehran, or the desire for a better future for the Iranian people, does not confer a legal justification. Force is lawful, under the UN charter, only in self-defence against an ...

Trump Rallies UN Security Council On Gaza, Hamas

Maybe the United Nations isn’t as useless as it so often shows. Last Monday the Security Council endorsed President Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, ratifying for the first time the requirements that Hamas disarm and Gaza be demilitarized. The resolution passed 13-0, with Russia and China abstaining. It’s a setback for the terrorists. Many had worried that the U.S. jaunt to the Security Council would come at the price of bending the peace plan’s terms for Hamas or adding anti-Israel terms. Would France’s Emmanuel Macron elbow his way into the deal’s implementation? ...

Picnic Season In Hickory Heights

Picnics took on various purposes through the years. Sometimes we had picnics when the men were working. That meant that either my sister-in-law and her family traveled or we did. In those days we ran two farms together. When the men worked at the lower farm, the picnic was there. When they worked on the upper farm that is where we had our picnics. Of course, whoever happened to be working with them that day had a picnic with us. The neighbor’s children were often helpers. Boy could those kids eat. They were good to feed because they ate everything and never complained. They sat by ...

Once Upon A Time In Falconer

Once upon a time, long ago now, I spent a lot of of time in the City of Falconer, which I found to be a magical little place. It was the home of my mother’s sister and her little family of four, and they were ensconced on a tiny little street named Grace, which at the time was inhabited by five or six houses all set on just one side of the street. On the other side lay a vast expanse of nothing, or so it seemed to me, with a highway somewhere far afield. And like all good highways, few kids knew where it went and where it came from. Occasionally my little cousin, who was once a ...

Forget-Me-Not Isn’t Only A Flower

Of all the things I’ve lost I miss my mind the most. I wish that old cliche were not so appropriate. I don’t know who said that first, but he or she was a perceptive genius, and definitely over sixty – the age when chronic forgetfulness moves in permanently. What are you saying to yourself? “I’m only 50 and I forget something every day?” Lucky you. You have been blessed with early onset CRS … Can’t Remember Stuff. I’m sorry for you, but I can’t help. And there is more bad news about this insidious disease: there’s no cure. It gets worse. Once you start losing ...

You’re A Grand Old Flag

One of my favorite projects that I had my students take part in. for maybe about the last ten years of my career, was our annual tribute to one of the symbols of our country, our Red, White and Blue, our Stars and Stripes, our Banner of Freedom, our American Flag. The idea of a Flag Day Celebration came about as a follow-up activity we started a couple years before our Flag Day Celebrations originated, when we began inviting Veterans to a luncheon on the day before or after Veterans’ Day, and had our students break bread with them, listen to their stories, which were not always as ...